When Detroit has lost its historically significant buildings, it’s often been for a parking lot.

This one was knocked down, flat as a pancake, for an IHOP restaurant - and it was done in violation of a court order.

The Alexander Chene House was among the oldest surviving houses in Detroit and one of the few remaining ties to the city’s French colonial past. The house - built around 1850 - was designated a city, state and national landmark, and for more than half a century, it was home to Little Harry’s restaurant, a beloved culinary institution.

Despite an outcry from the community, it was demolished by singer Anita Baker and replaced by the pancake chain.

A home on what was then still the range

The property on which the house sat was originally part of a land grant made in 1707 by King Louis XIV, the so-called “Sun King,” and became part of the Chene Farm. The first Chene to arrive in Detroit was Pierre St. Onge, who was nicknamed “Chene” because of his reputed muscular physique. The Bois de Chene was known as the tree of strength. In English, Chene means “oak,” so St. Onge must have been “strong as an oak tree.”

The Chene family became one of early Detroit’s most successful families. Some members of the clan spelled their new name “Chesne,” while others adopted the name LaButte instead. Over the years, the Chenes would become connected to other legendary Detroit names, including the Campau, Chapoton, Dequindre, Macomb, Moran, Palms and St. Aubin families.

The Chene Farm encompassed 114 acres, and it is important to acknowledge that the Chene family used enslaved labor on the property.

After Alexander Chene received a portion of that land from his grandfather Gabriel Chene in 1850, he built this house upon it. The home - built of red brick in the Federalist style - was originally just four rooms, with two on each floor and each room with a fireplace. A one-story, Roman-Doric porch rose above the front entrance along East Jefferson Avenue. The windows had decorative, flat-top, iron lintels, and there was cornice molding wrapped around the facade. The architect is unknown, but it could have been Chene himself. The structure was a relatively modest abode, even for the time, but that would change under a future owner.

Chene-ging of the guard

Chene later deeded the house to his sister Elizabeth. In 1880, the house was purchased by Stephen Grummond, an operator of a tugboat and other maritime vessels. It would then be sold and turned into a rooming house for a spell. Then it became owned by Jeremiah and William Dwyer, the brothers behind the Detroit Stove Co. The Dwyer family was synonymous with stoves and was almost single-handedly responsible for making Detroit the world leader in producing them.

In 1902, the Chene House was sold to Charles B. and Helen Warren, who drastically altered it by adding 10 rooms to it, bringing it to about 12,000 square feet. Warren was a successful lawyer who was known as a kingmaker for his role in selecting Republican presidential nominees, including William Howard Taft, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Warren later became an ambassador to Mexico and Japan. The Warrens would live in the home until moving to Grosse Pointe in 1914.

After the Warrens moved out, the structure was taken over by the University of Detroit and used as a fraternity house. It’s not clear how long it remained in the Jesuits’ hands, but it wasn’t long.

The property was listed for sale in June 1929 as a "club room or restaurant." Other ads offered room and board for $10-$12. On Aug. 10, 1930, a classified ad listed it as a “complete restaurant for sale, 19 tables. Will sacrifice, cheap.” Then in May 1931: "Club house - completely, comfortably furnished; suitable restaurant."

While a buyer was sought, the house became a speakeasy during Prohibition, where Detroiters could wet their whistles after sneaking in through the side basement door. “Only handpicked clients knew how to get in,” the Detroit Free Press recalled in an Aug. 26, 1963, article on the house. “They had to know which slat in the fence was loose and how to tip it a certain way” to gain access to the side door.

In August 1932, ads for the Milano Cafe started appearing, but that venture was short-lived because in November 1934, the building would get its longest-tenured tenant.

Little Harry’s: A big deal

In 1933, Harry Bianchini opened a restaurant in the house. It quickly became the place to be seen among the city’s movers and shakers and would go on to have a lengthy and sentimental history among Detroiters and an even longer list of devotees.

Bianchini was short, and had previously worked for a tall man also named Harry. Their customers differentiated them by their height, and thus, Bianchini became known as "Little Harry."

Generations of Detroiters passed through a New Orleans-style courtyard with a stone fountain and entered the restaurant under a long red awning that extended into the parking lot on the east side of the house.

Guests would pony up to the copper-faced bar or slide into one of the lush leather banquettes in the taproom. Waiters in tailored dinner jackets would flit among tables in the main dining room - dominated by a large fireplace on the east wall. "The conservative old brick facade of Little Harry's has for years been a favorite of the eating cognoscenti," Louis Cook wrote in the Free Press on Sept. 4, 1966.

In the 1940s, a Little Harry's was opened in Fort Lauderdale, but Bianchini died Feb. 13, 1943. The popular restaurant would continue operating under new ownership and its old name.

In 1949, the restaurant was busted for selling cheaper whisky than that indicated by the labels. The Michigan Liquor Control Commission suspended the restaurant's license for six months and fined it $300, about $4,000 in 2025, when adjusted for inflation.

A Diamond turns Little Harry’s into a gem

Diamond Thomas Phillips bought the establishment in 1958, and would run it for the next three decades.

"I used to be a guest, and I thought it was the most charming restaurant in Detroit," Phillips told the Free Press for a Dec. 18, 1966, profile. "I put a deposit down on it, then someone convinced me I shouldn't buy it - that they wanted too much. One day, though, I heard Little Harry's was sold. I called the owner up and asked if it were true, and he said it was. I said: 'What'll it take to queer the deal?' He said $5,000 more, so I bought it then and there."

Born on the Greek isle of Lesbos on Dec. 20, 1914, Diamond was his real name.

"I wonder why no one ever seems to think names like Pearl, Opal, Ruby or Garnet are humorous,” Phillips told the Free Press for a blurb in its March 31, 1954, edition.

Phillips became one of the city’s most successful restaurateurs, owning at least 14 Detroit-area bars and restaurants at one time or another. He'd go on "gourmandizing trips" through Europe and the East looking for recipes to bring back to Little Harry's and his other establishments. In 1963, Phillips acquired Cliff Bell's and also ran the Old Wayne Club, The Old Place, the Golden Lion, The Showboat on Washington Boulevard and the King’s Table in the First National Building, among others.

During a remodel at Little Harry’s, a bunch of love letters were discovered in the rafters that were so salacious, Phillips said he tore them up. He also found letters from 1868 discussing a divorce scandal. If only the house’s walls could talk - but in a way, they did.

Phillips stuffed the place with antique mirrors, gold chandeliers, paintings, cigar store Native Americans and busts of Cupid. The dining room was said to be cool and dark, with heavy old polished wood and filled with the aroma of sizzling London broil.

“Some of the bar’s banquettes back to large mirrors, giving the gentlemen a mottled (and reversed) view of the action in the room behind him,” the Free Press wrote Oct. 5, 1973. “This is important, because gregarious folk gather at Little Harry’s.”

Phillips once told George Cantor of The Detroit News that "If I had a dollar for every guy who told me that he'd proposed to his wife in that place, I'd have retired long ago."

One of Phillips’ more successful ideas was introducing a piano bar and hiring Carl Denell to play for guests. Denell would tickle the ivories at Little Harry's for 25 years, from 1956 until 1981.

The piano man

Denell was born in Gollnow, Germany, near Berlin in 1915. He took up piano when he was 9, and two years later, the young prodigy was accompanying silent films in a tiny Berlin movie theater. He was accepted into the Berlin Academy of Music at age 22 and attended there until being drafted in 1944. He would be wounded four times in the war.

"War is war," Denell told the Free Press for an Oct. 19, 1980, story. "It's too rough - for a musician, it's too much."

After he was discharged in 1946, he served as a conductor with the Berlin Opera House. In 1956, he came to the U.S. on a job playing piano aboard a German luxury liner. It was on this ship that he met a Detroit industrialist who offered to sponsor him so that Denell could enter the country. That same year, he signed a six-week contract to play at Little Harry's, and, other than a yearlong stint at the Fox and Hounds in suburban Bloomfield Hills and a brief stint at the Old Place restaurant in Grosse Pointe Park, he could be found at Little Harry's. Denell would become well-known around town, even performing as a guest soloist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He would remember dinner guests' favorite songs and play them when he spotted them in the crowd.

"He knows which selections will lift up a tired audience and which will calm down a rowdy one," the Free Press said. "I mean, we don't sell buttermilk here - we sell alcohol," the then-65-year-old Denell told the paper.

After stepping away from the piano at Little Harry’s in 1981, he took some gigs here and there around town afterward. He died in 2003.

Star-gazing

Little Harry's was the place for Hollywood stars and other celebrities when in Detroit. Among those known to grab a bite there were Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Jimmy Durante.

Auto executives, advertising men and the city’s political movers and shakers frequented the place and hashed out an untold number of deals between bites of “steak diamond” and other delicacies.

“Anybody who was about anything in Detroit had to be seen in Little Harry's," Hillis Williams, who started at the restaurant in 1952 as a bus boy and worked his way up to manager, told the Free Press for a Jan. 26, 1990, story.

Henry Ford II once returned a drink to the waiter and insisted on seeing her father, Gail Phillips recalled to the Detroit Free Press for an Oct. 3, 1995, story.

"Mr. Ford had put a plastic cube with a fly in it into his drink. When my dad saw that it was a joke, he told the water to give Mr. Ford a new drink." The new drink was wrapped in a cocktail napkin with the General Motors logo emblazoned across it. Phillips gained national notoriety for the practical joke after it was reported in Time magazine.

"It was quite a sight seeing Walt Disney sitting at the bar or Carol Channing sitting on the piano singing 'Hello, Dolly,'" Gail Phillips told the Free Press. "Everyone would join in. It was just wonderful times."

In 1977, the restaurant was used for the movie "The Betsy," a film based on a novel by Harold Robbins about the fictional Detroit automaker Bethlehem Motors that tries to build a revolutionary kerosene-powered car. The flick, starring Laurence Olivier, Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, filmed at Little Harry’s in August 1977.

Big trouble for Little Harry's

But by the 1970s, some of Harry’s luster had begun to wear off, even if the “food at Little Harry’s is among the best in Detroit,” the Free Press would say.

"The tone of the place has thus altered, with some grace, from the more formal old days to what is now a garrulous, good-times hangout," the paper wrote Jan. 22, 1978. "The other night, the fireplace was lit, and the light from the fire and the electric candles on the walls spread over the same old pastoral scenes on the stylish cream-and-black wallpaper, the dark wood wainscoting and ceiling. With the lights a little bit lower, it would have seemed very 19th century."

During this era, chef Raymond Dell served a menu featuring lamb chops, tenderloin a la Oscar topped with crab and asparagus, sliced beef tenderloin bordelaise, pickerel and perch. Dinners – served until midnight six days a week – ranged from $8 to $13, or about $40 to $67 in 2025, when adjusted for inflation.

As one of the last surviving homes of its kind in the city, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Oct. 9, 1985, as a contributing building in the East Jefferson Avenue Residential historic district.

But with Phillips now in his 70s and looking to downsize, he put Little Harry’s up for sale. Meanwhile, Phillips worked with an Ypsilanti firm to remove a number of architectural items, including the fireplace mantel with carved lion heads, before letting the beloved institution go.

Grammy-winning singer Anita Baker and her then-husband, computer executive Walter Bridgforth Jr., bought Little Harry's from Phillips in January 1990 for $575,000, about $1.5 million in 2025. It was announced that the restaurant would close Feb. 17, 1990.

Bridgforth told the Free Press for an item in its Jan. 27, 1990, edition that he and Baker were "so excited with the location" and called it "a dream come true" that the couple now owned the historic house. He told the paper that they were looking at a number of uses for the building, "possibly music-related, but it won't be a recording studio," despite rumors that were floating to the contrary. The couple said they were talking with retail franchisers and wouldn’t rule out opening a restaurant in the space. Regardless, Bridgforth said something would be happening in the space in the next 60 to 90 days.

Phillips died Sept. 28, 1995, at age 80. The beloved restaurant would beat him to the grave.

‘Caught up in the Rapture’ of demolition

A few months after buying the Chene House, Baker and Bridgforth announced that they wanted to tear it down. That set off protests from preservationists, including those at the nonprofit historic preservation group Cityscape Detroit. Its members pointed out that there was already plenty of vacant land along East Jefferson Avenue and that the house was the only surviving example of its type and age left in the city.

Baker’s attorney Renee McDuffee told the Detroit Free Press for an April 6, 1990, article that the couple "have weighed the somewhat historic value of the building against their exciting plans for the site, which I'm not at liberty to disclose."

In early April 1990, the City of Detroit's Building Safety and Engineering Department issued a demolition order, a violation of a city ordinance requiring a public hearing before a locally designated landmark can be demolished. Cityscape was able to obtain an April 5 court order to halt the demolition. The demolition permit was said to have been issued in a "clerical glitch."

"Detroit, which has already failed to preserve far too much of its past, could be on the verge of losing another important landmark," the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board opined April 11, 1990. "Just a few months after most of the Monroe Block fell victim to the wrecker's ball, the historically significant Chene House on East Jefferson Avenue is being threatened with demolition. ... That must not be allowed to happen. ... To grant approval for the house's destruction would be a serious and irreversible error."

The paper cited not only the history of the building but the vagueness of Baker's redevelopment plans and the abundance of vacant land along or near Jefferson Avenue.

On April 20, 1990, nine decorative items from Little Harry's were put up for auction at DuMouchelle's in Detroit, including an antique brass chandelier with 30 lights and a marble and alabaster lamp. Meanwhile, Baker and her husband continued trying to get the historic landmark torn down.

Following the city ordinance this time, the couple found themselves in front of the Detroit Historic District Commission (HDC) that August. Their attorneys contended that it would cost at least $1.3 million to renovate the Chene House and that there was no economic use that would let them recover that investment. Lawyers for the couple refused to divulge any details about the couple's plan for the site if the house were razed.

When Gregory Reed, an attorney for Baker, protested that the HDC was violating Baker and Bridgforth's rights by telling them they had to do what they didn't want to with their property, HDC member Taylor Segue III replied, "Mr. Reed, we did not sit on Mr. Bridgforth's shoulders and ask him to purchase the Chene House."

McDuffee said the couple was told when they bought the house that it was not protected. The house was not only historically designated locally, but was on state and national landmark lists, too. The problem apparently came from someone at the City checking for the name "Little Harry's" and not by the property's address or the name that the building was listed under on the historic registries, the Chene House.

"Detroit has lost so much of its architectural heritage that those buildings that remain become all the more precious," John Stroh III of the Stroh brewery family, told the HDC. Clyde Chene Jr., a ninth-generation member of the family, also spoke against demolishing the property.

The HDC denied their request Aug. 2, 1990, by a 4-1 vote with two abstentions. The commissioners told the couple to sell the property instead.

They listed it for $950,000 - about $2.4 million in 2025 and nearly twice what they paid for it. Unsurprisingly, they didn't find a buyer.

"The 'for sale' sale might be an attempt to prove that the 1850s-era residence ... has no economic value," the Free Press wrote June 19, 1990. "If the couple gets no takers, they might be eligible for a hardship exemption in the city's landmark statute.”

That statute allows for demolition of a protected landmark if it would inflict economic hardship on the owners.

Preservationists said Baker and Bridgforth overpaid and that failing to sell it for twice what they forked over should not be taken as proof of economic hardship. "A property's value nearly doubling in less than six months is all but heard of in the city," the Free Press noted.

Nothing about the situation made sense, as Cantor, the Detroit News columnist, noted April 10, 1991: "This is a very odd sounding deal. You pay $550,000 for a lot and historic house when there are thousands of lots, not too far away, that could be picked up for back taxes. Are there mineral rights under the place? Something smells most peculiar here. It is a fine thing that Baker wants to invest in the city. That isn't the point. But it is a very big city, and there is only one Chene House. ...

"Throughout this century, Detroit's biggest problem has been the inability of its leaders to think in the long term. This administration is following a well-worn path, adopting short-term patchwork solutions that screw up the original situation worse than before."

A crying Chene

Eight months after the HDC denied Baker and Bridgforth, the City - seemingly determined on placating the famous singer - granted a demolition permit, in April 1991. Cityscape sought a temporary restraining order from Wayne County Circuit Judge Sharon Tevis Finch, which was issued April 6, 1991. Preservationists headed over to the Chene House, put a copy of the restraining order in a plastic sleeve and secured it to the demolition fence that day.

But it was all in vain, as the same night that the restraining order was issued, and under the cover of darkness, a bulldozer driver from Avis Wrecking Co. of Detroit started tearing into the house anyway. Two-thirds of the structure was demolished by the following day. Contempt of court charges were filed against Baker and Bridgforth but dismissed when they successfully argued that they were out of town and didn't know about the restraining order.

"The order came through at 4:30 p.m. Friday,” Kim Stroud, a board member of Cityscape Detroit, told the Free Press for a story April 8, 1991. “We went straight to the house with copies. We called the precinct police. We called the Bridgforths' lawyer. We were doing everything we could. We were afraid they would try something like this."

With the damage done, the restraining order was lifted and the rest of the building razed.

Patricia Fine, who ate at Little Harry's, came to pay her last respects on April 13, 1991, the day the last of the historic building came down.

"It's a shame," she told The Detroit News for a story the following day, "not because it was Little Harry's, but because it was the Chene House. It's one more piece of the city's history gone that can never be replaced. We're the only city in America that trashes our past."

John Swainson, a former Michigan governor who was the president of the Michigan Historical Commission at the time, told the Free Press that "I'm sure a lot of historians will be disappointed to see a structure so intimately tied to our beginnings so cavalierly destroyed."

In a front page article in the April 17, 1991, edition of the Michigan Chronicle, Adolph Mongo, an aide to Mayor Coleman Young, called preservationists protectors of ruins that mean little to Black Detroiters. The Chene family enslaved Black people such as himself, and there was a period in Little Harry's early days in which African-Americans were not welcomed. Further, emotional memories alone can't bring economic prosperity, he argued.

"I'm sorry that I can't get upset over the demolition of Little Harry's," Mongo wrote. "I gagged after seeing the former owners cry on television. If they loved it so much, why didn't they keep it? Why didn't Cityscape Detroit offer to buy the building or pay for its upkeep during the 12 months the building was for sale? The answer is simple: They want someone else to pay the expensive bill for preserving their memories."

The counterpoint to that, of course, is that Baker and Bridgforth were trying to sell the restaurant for almost twice what they had paid for it themselves, which many said was already too much.

On Oct. 17, 1990, The Detroit News published an interview with Baker in which she said she didn't feel hounded by the press coverage. "I'm a celebrity, and that's part of the territory," she told the paper. "Actually, I like the publicity. It even made the New York papers. ... What I did resent were the bogus reports on TV and in some papers that we were going to put a recording studio in there. The implication is just because I'm a recording artist, that's what I'd do. Ridiculous! A recording studio on Jefferson! Give me a little more credit than that. That was the only thing that bothered me. We basically had no idea what we were going to do with it. We own a lot of property; that's just one piece."

That said, Baker and Bridgforth filed a defamation suit against Cityscape in November 1992 seeking nearly $1 million for allegedly damaging Baker's singing career by protesting the demolition. A year later, a mediator awarded Baker $500 from Cityscape and $500 from Cityscape attorney Jon Gandelot.

Adding insult to architectural injury, in September 1992, the vacant site was listed for sale for $500,000 (about $1.1 million in 2025 valuation). That November, Bridgforth told Crain's Detroit Business that national restaurant chains said the nearly one-acre site was too small and that there weren't enough people living nearby to lure them to the property.

"The indignity comes not just from the loss of the beauty of that old house, not from the stark reality of the now-vacant lot, not from the hope of seeing a fast-food restaurant replace it, not from piped-in music replacing Little Harry's live piano, but from the thought of beef Wellington and other delicacies giving way to a Grand Slam Breakfast. Is nothing sacred anymore?" Detroit resident Ken Jaeger wrote in a letter to the editor published in the March 31, 1993, edition of the Detroit Free Press.

Cantor wrote April 9, 1993, that "Little Harry's has turned into a lot of nothing. That's the situation on East Jefferson, almost two years after the historic landmark restaurant was torn down in a fevered rush, in violation of a court order, to make way for an 'exciting' new project. The excitement seems to have waned. ... Tthe Chene House itself was an irreplaceable part of Detroit's history. In a recent Detroit News survey, a surprisingly large reservoir of suburban affection for the city was traced. Much of that affection is based on shared memories in fondly remembered places, such as Little Harry's. Every time one of them disappears, another such connection is severed."

William Colburn, president of Preservation Wayne, told Cantor that "I don't believe there ever was a project, 'exciting' or otherwise. No plans were ever shown, no details ever discussed. It may all have been talk to cover up a bad business decision."

Bridgforth said his W.B.B.J. Invetment Co. sent hundreds of faxes to 30 national restaurant chains trying to get any of them to bite on the site, from Bob Evans to Ram's Horn to Denny's. It took two years, but he finally got the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) to agree to a 25-year lease on the property.

Columnist Jon Pepper sarcastically wrote in The Detroit News on Oct. 8, 1993, about the news: "Skeptics should note the rubble marking the former location of the historic Chene House ... will soon become a pancake house. It won't be just any old domestic pancake joint, mind you, but an International House of Pancakes. Now that certainly makes the destruction of an architectural gem well worth the controversy. No doubt, we'll be getting lots of global business on Detroit's east side as tourists flock to sample the exotic cakes from Sweden, Germany and France and even some parts of Canada. (Some dishes reportedly feature red syrup!) ... When people question whether (retiring Mayor) Coleman Young had a vision for the city, remember his staunch support for the demolition of the Chene House, which led to this bold stroke for the city's future. It's that kind of leadership we'll sorely miss."

A groundbreaking for the new restaurant, which could seat 160 people, was set for March 14, 1994.

"Walter is a very persuasive gentleman," IHOP Corp. Chairman and President Richard K. Herzer told The Detroit News for a March 3, 1994, article. "He basically figured out what he wanted and kept reminding us that there was this opportunity. Finally, I said, 'Maybe I'd better take a hard look at this because we could be missing some opportunities.' And to me, we were."

Finally, on Nov. 17, 1994, the IHOP opened, with future Mayor Dave Bing, former Detroit Pistons star Vinnie Johnson and radio personality Martha Jean "The Queen" Steinberg joining Baker and Bridgforth in attending its grand opening. Promoters claimed it was the first new family restaurant of its kind in the city in more than two decades.

After it closed, the building was turned into the Detroit House of Pancakes.

On Sept. 5, 1992, The Detroit News Editorial Board summed up the sad saga over the building's demolition, as follows: "Anita Baker hit a sour note with Detroiters ... for her arrogant demolition of an 1850 landmark. It's too bad she got away without penalty. ... The lesson, of course, is that historic designation is a trifle any developer may swat away without retribution. Even before the building came down, Ms. Baker had generous help from City lawyers in trying to skirt preservation rules. If they gave a Grammy for egregious sins against the urban street scene, the City and Ms. Baker would share it."